Reliability is an important attribute of a firearm, especially semiautomatic pistols. One heretofore overlooked opportunity to improve the reliability of pistols concerns the effect of inertial forces on cartridges in the magazine of the pistol. When the pistol is fired, momentum is conserved and reaction forces operate to force the pistol in a direction opposite to the direction of travel of the bullet, the well-known phenomenon of recoil. However, the cartridges are held only loosely in the magazine and resist moving in response to recoil by their own inertia. The cartridges in the magazine will thus appear to move in the opposite direction relative to the pistol due to the sudden application of the recoil forces. This can lead to malfunctioning of the pistol because the cartridge at the top of the magazine may not be in the most advantageous position when the slide moves into battery to strip it from the magazine and chamber it in the barrel. There would be a clear advantage to counteracting the inertial forces on the cartridges in the magazine.